Encyclopedia of

Kevorkian, Jack

The pathologist Jack Kevorkian became the central figure in the
physician-assisted death controversy in the United States, a controversy
that has had ripple effects throughout the world. Born in 1928, Kevorkian
was the son of refugees who escaped the Turkish massacre of Armenians in
1915. Many of the members of his mother's family and all of the
members of his father's family were among the victims. The
Kevorkians settled in Pontiac, Michigan, where his father worked in an
automobile factory and his mother looked after Jack and his sisters Margo
and Flora, who would assist him throughout the activism career he launched
in his later adult years.

"Intelligent," "resourceful," and
"independent" are adjectives often applied to the young
Kevorkian by those who knew him. He went his own way and questioned
authority long before it became commonplace to do so. An honor student in
high school, Kevorkian obtained his medical degree from the University of
Michigan in 1952.

Early Career

The specialty with the most appeal to him was pathology, the study of
diseases and their effects. He soon devoted himself to studying the
physical changes wrought by death. As early as his residency at Detroit
Receiving Hospital in 1956, colleagues gave him the nickname
"Doctor Death." Kevorkian was especially curious about the
status of the eye at death, and arranged to be notified when a patient was
on the verge of death. After death, the cornea becomes hazy and the retina
segmented and pale as blood circulation ceases. Kevorkian recommended that
his fellow physicians examine the eyes whenever there is a need to look
for signs of life. His findings were published in medical science
literature.

Dying and death were neglected topics of research and education in
medicine when the young physician was conducting his studies. He was
therefore almost as much an outsider as an insider.

Difficulties in working against the mainstream were also being
experienced by other pioneers in their various clinical and academic
environments. Kevorkian showed little or no interest in these parallel
developments. Years later he still held himself apart from the
hospice/palliative care movement, death education and counseling, peer
support groups, and the rapidly expanding base of research knowledge.
Kevorkian therefore made himself vulnerable to criticism that he had
failed to inform himself of significant developments in pain control,
social support, and other areas in the field of death and dying.

Meanwhile, he considered marriage but broke off his engagement because he
judged that his fiancée did not possess "sufficient
self-discipline" (Betzold 1996, p.38). Many years later he
expressed regrets for missing out on the satisfactions of family life, but
the absence of these obligations and distractions offered more opportunity
for his other pursuits. In addition to his primary agenda, Kevorkian
learned to play several musical instruments, and created some intense,
death-haunted oil paintings.

The Activist

Kevorkian had an activist agenda in mind long before he became a public
figure. He proposed that the bodies of executed criminals be used for
scientific experiments. The convicts would be anesthetized in order to
keep their bodies somewhat alive and therefore available for experiments
that could not be conducted on people who were entirely alive. He also
transfused blood to living patients from the corpses of people who had
experienced a sudden death. Both the death-row proposal and the cadaver
donor procedure were ill-received by the medical establishment.
Kevorkian's views made him increasingly unpopular and therefore
limited his employment opportunities. As his mainstream medical career
faded, however, Kevorkian had more time available to advance his mission.

Kevorkian set forth his agenda in his book
Prescription: Medicide
(1991). He took the position that the Hippocratic oath is not and never
has been binding on physicians. Kevorkian contended that a new medical
specialty, "obitiariry," should be established to offer
"moribund people" a dignified
and easy death and to provide the opportunity for experimental research
on their remains. This specialty would be practiced at centers for
medically assisted suicide and research, which were to be known as
"obituaria." Kevorkian thought that medically assisted
suicide—or what he termed "medicide"—should be
made available to all people who wish to end their suffering, whether or
not they are terminally ill.

Kevorkian's Crusade

The first step in applying his program was his construction of a
"suicide machine" that he called first the Thanatron, then
the Mercitron. The physician prepares the machine, but it is the patient
who presses a button to release a deadly drug. A middle-aged woman by the
name of Janet Adkins was the first person to make use of
Kevorkian's invention on June 4, 1990. Kevorkian was charged with
murder but was then released when the court ruled that Michigan had no law
against assisted suicide. His license to practice medicine in Michigan was
suspended, however, and later authorities in California did likewise.

During the 1990s Kevorkian was "present" at the deaths of at
least 120 people. His participation in these deaths was labeled as
"murder" or "homicide" by Michigan authorities
who, nevertheless, failed in repeated attempts to convict him. He was
charged repeatedly with assisted suicide as well as murder, each time
defying and defeating the courts with the help of a high-profile attorney.
Kevorkian argued that he had not and would not kill anybody—the
patients had made the last move on their own volition.

It was Kevorkian who put himself into a position in which a guilty verdict
was almost inescapable. He invited CBS's
60 Minutes
program to show a videotape he had made of his participation in the death
of Thomas Youk. The result was conviction for second-degree murder and
delivery of a controlled substance. He received a sentence of ten to
twenty-five years in prison, which he began serving in 1999. Despite
Kevorkian's conviction and jailing, the assisted suicide
controversy stimulated by his beliefs and actions continues to influence
health care, legislation, and the field of bioethics.